Huawei Adopts Target's IP Designer Tool-Suite to Build Next-Generation Baseband DSP

49th Design Automation Conference – San Francisco, California, June 5, 2012.Target Compiler Technologies, the leader in ASIP design tools, today announced that Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, has adopted Target’s IP Designer™ tool-suite.  Huawei is using IP Designer to design DSP cores for next generation wireless communication devices.  By using IP Designer, Huawei plans to increase real-time performance, power efficiency, and flexibility of future baseband SoCs.

Alan Gatherer, CTO for Baseband System on Chip at Huawei Technologies, USA comments:  “Our team’s objective is to define optimal DSP architectures for use in Huawei’s basestation products.  To do so, we evaluate various architectures under real-world load using our proprietary software as the benchmark.  IP Designer is the enabling technology which allows us to evaluate several architectural options in a short period of time – resulting in DSPs that have better performance and efficiency in our end-systems than even the best-fit commercially available DSP IP.  Matching the DSP architecture to our software enables us to further differentiate our offering in the marketplace.”

IP Designer is an EDA tool-suite used by SoC designers to design, optimize and program custom DSPs (and other such application-specific processor cores – a.k.a. ASIPs).  The designer can easily describe custom DSP architectures with performance and energy characteristics that are superior to commercially available processor IP. Using Target’s processor modeling language (nML) and the IP Designer tool-suite (which includes a highly optimizing C compiler, a cycle- or instruction-accurate instruction-set simulator, and a graphical/interactive debugging/profiling environment), designers can explore and fine-tune a processor architecture for performance and efficiency and then automatically generate low-power RTL and comprehensive verification suites.

“The immediate availability of an optimized, targeted C-compiler for each candidate DSP architecture is a key benefit of Target’s IP Designer product” remarks Dr. Gatherer.  “With that, we are able to quickly evaluate new architectures against our proprietary software (which is written in C) in order to determine the benefit of specific architectural features.  Target’s compiler technology is unique for its speed of retargetability and its ability to optimize code for these specialized architectures.” 

Today’s announcement illustrates the breadth of architectures which are possible with IP Designer. “Wireless designs have been a major growth market for our tools over the past few years,” comments Gert Goossens, Target’s CEO.  “Rapidly increasing capacity requirements combined with rapid evolution among wireless standards have resulted in a keen interest in design techniques that marry high-performance, power-efficiency, and flexibility.  While many of our wireless customers leverage the low-power capabilities of IP Designer for mobile handsets, Huawei’s move shows that ASIPs can also meet the demanding performance requirements of wireless infrastructure systems.”

Huawei’s licensing of IP Designer marks one of several announcements issued today by Target.

About Target Compiler Technologies

Target Compiler Technologies (www.retarget.com) is the leading provider of retargetable software tools to accelerate the design, programming and verification of application-specific processor cores (ASIPs). Target's IP Designer tool suite is ideally suited for SoC designs in markets that mandate low silicon cost, low energy consumption, and flexibility to accommodate algorithmic changes. The tools have been used by customers around the globe to design SoCs for 2G/3G/4G handsets, cordless and VoIP phones, audio/video/image processing, infotainment and security for cars, DSL modems, DSL access multiplexers, wireless LAN, hearing instruments, and personal healthcare systems. Target is a spin-off of the Belgian nano-electronics R&D center IMEC, is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with North American operations in Boulder, Colorado.